Tim O'Brien

“His brain had the bends.”

— Tim O'Brien

“Zapped while zipping.”

— Tim O'Brien

But this too is true: stories can save us.

— Tim O'Brien

“They would repair the leaks in their eyes.”

— Tim O'Brien

Once you're alive, you can't ever be dead.

— Tim O'Brien

What happened, and what might have happened?

— Tim O'Brien

Imagination is a killer.

— Tim O'Brien

Let the story tell itself.

— Tim O'Brien

“Hear that quiet, man?' he said. 'That quiet - just listen. There's your moral.”

— Tim O'Brien

Life is never all one thing. It bounces around. Certainly, my own life has.

— Tim O'Brien

Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to.

— Tim O'Brien

A lie, sometimes, can be truer than the truth, which is why fiction gets written.

— Tim O'Brien

Inside I feel much like a 12-year-old or a 17-year-old who knows big words.

— Tim O'Brien

“Peace never bragged. If you didn't look for it, it wasn't there.”

— Tim O'Brien

The world shrieks and sinks talons into our hearts. This we call memory.

— Tim O'Brien

Why do our politicians put warnings on cigarette packs and not on their own foreheads?

— Tim O'Brien

It's a hard thing to explain to somebody who hasn't felt it, but the presence of death and danger has a way…

— Tim O'Brien

... when he kissed her, she received the kiss without returning it, her eyes wide open, not afraid, not a virgin's eyes,…

— Tim O'Brien

“I’m not dead. But when I am, it’s like . . . I don’t know, I guess it’s like being inside a…

— Tim O'Brien

“She'd say amazing things sometimes. "Once you're alive," she'd say, "you cant ever be dead.”

— Tim O'Brien

...precisely where the land touched water at high tide, where things came together but also separated.

— Tim O'Brien

My life is storytelling. I believe in stories, in their incredible power to keep people alive, to keep the living alive, and…

— Tim O'Brien

“All around me the options seemed to be narrowing, as if I were hurtling down a huge black funnel, the whole world…

— Tim O'Brien

They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried.

— Tim O'Brien

But I do like churches. The way it feels inside. It feels good when you just sit there, like you're in a…

— Tim O'Brien

“when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause. You can't fix…

— Tim O'Brien

A good piece of fiction, in my view, does not offer solutions. Good stories deal with our moral struggles, our uncertainties, our…

— Tim O'Brien

“The story' Sanders would say "the whole tone, man, you're wrecking it." Tone?' The sound. You need to get a consitent sound,…

— Tim O'Brien

We are fascinated, all of us, by the implacable otherness of others. And we wish to penetrate by hypothesis, by daydream, by…

— Tim O'Brien

If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if…

— Tim O'Brien

“Down inside, of course, I wasn't sure, and yet I had to see her one more time. What I needed, I suppose,…

— Tim O'Brien

A miracle to confound natural law, a baffling reversal of the inevitable consequences . . . a miracle. . . . An…

— Tim O'Brien

“Why do we care about Lizzie Borden, or Judge Crater, or Lee Harvey Oswald, or the Little Big Horn? Mystery! Because of…

— Tim O'Brien

“Yes, the issue was courage. It always had been, even as a kid. Things scared him. He couldn't help it. Noise scared…

— Tim O'Brien

“When a man died, there had to be blame. Jimmy Cross understood this. You could blame the war, You could blame the…

— Tim O'Brien

“The town could not talk, and would not listen. "How'd you like to hear about the war?" he might have asked, but…

— Tim O'Brien

“It is easy, of course, to fear happiness. There is often complacency in the acceptance of misery. We fear parting from our…

— Tim O'Brien

“Most of this I've told before, or at least hinted at, but what I have never told is the full truth. How…

— Tim O'Brien

“he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe her blood and be smothered. He wanted her to be a virgin and…

— Tim O'Brien

“All of us, I suppose, like to believe that in a moral emergency we will behave like the heroes of our youth,…

— Tim O'Brien